Arrow Solitaire vs mahjong solitaire — and what Arrow Escape doesn't ask

If you play mahjong solitaire, you already know how to play Arrow Solitaire: Crosswise. You scan a full board, you look for two matching pieces, and you take them off together. What you don't know yet is the one rule mahjong never had — and it is the whole reason this game exists.

What Crosswise keeps from mahjong solitaire

The inheritance is deliberate. Matching pairs of identical pieces. A board that starts full and must end empty. No clock pushing you, no pieces raining from above — the whole puzzle is on the table from the first second, and the difficulty lives in the order you take it apart.

Crosswise keeps another mahjong promise too: every board is fully solvable. If you run out of moves, the layout didn't betray you — the sequence did. That is exactly the mahjong contract: the fun is in reading the board, not in gambling on it.

The rule mahjong never had

In mahjong solitaire, a matched pair removes two tiles. In Crosswise, a matched pair removes a line.

That sweep is the new mechanic, and it rewires the question you ask before every move. Mahjong asks: which two pieces match? Crosswise asks: what will disappear when these two meet? A pair is no longer just a pair — it is a clearing line, and the arrows caught inside it are part of your decision. Sometimes the awkward piece you can't match at all is exactly the one you remove as collateral, by flying another pair straight through it.

So the familiar calm stays, but the thinking gets a third dimension: not just what matches, but what stands between the match.

And what about Arrow Escape?

Arrow-grid puzzles like Arrow Escape start from the same picture — a board packed with arrows — but they play a different game. There, a tapped arrow simply flies off the board if its path is clear; the puzzle is a traffic jam, and your job is to untangle it in the right order.

Crosswise looks like a cousin and behaves like a different species. An arrow here never escapes into empty space — it flies toward its pair, a same-colour arrow crossing its line. Nothing leaves the board alone: every removal is a meeting of two, plus whatever stood between them. Where an untangle puzzle asks “is the path clear?”, Crosswise asks “is this the right pair — and the right moment for it?”

If this way of reading a board appeals to you, the strategy guide goes deeper — clearing lines, protecting key arrows, and the endgame.